Donald Ewen Cameron

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Donald Ewen Cameron

Donald Ewen Cameron (born December 24, 1901 in Bridge of Allan , Perthshire , United Kingdom , † September 8, 1967 in Lake Placid , New York , United States ) was a Scottish-American psychiatrist who most recently worked in Canada . It is primarily for his work in the field of mind control for the CIA become known.

Life

Cameron graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1924 . In 1942 he went to the USA, lived and worked in Albany (New York) .

In the first half of the 1940s he worked for the Office of Strategic Services . He developed Depatterning Treatment and Psychic driving , which the CIA was interested in. A repetitive audio message on a looped tape was created to influence behavior.

In 1943 Cameron founded the Allan Memorial Institute at McGill University in Montreal (Canada) , which he developed into a world-renowned psychiatric research center. In 1945 he assessed the National Socialist Rudolf Hess psychiatrically during the Nuremberg Trials .

In the mid-1950s, Dr. Cameron Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University, Senior Psychiatrist at Royal Victoria Hospital and Director of the Allain Memorial Institute. 1952/53 he was president of the American Psychiatric Association . He was also elected President of the Quebec and Canadian Psychiatric Association , the World Psychiatric Association (1961–1966), the Society for Biological Psychiatry, and the American Psychopathological Association.

From 1957 to 1964 he participated in the CIA project MKULTRA for mind control. His treatment experiments were carried out on civilians in his clinic without their knowledge or consent.

In 1956/57 Val Orlikow, wife of the Canadian MP David Orlikow , came to him for treatment for depression. On her, as on hundreds of other patients with minor problems, he made his driving experiments with LSD , sleep therapy and electric shocks . When Val Orlikov left the Allain Memorial, she had the mind of a toddler and no memory of her husband and children. It was only ten years after Cameron's death, after the Orlikovs read of a Congressional hearing on the CIA brainwashing experiments, that they managed to expose these "treatments".

Another patient was Linda McDonald. In 1962, after her fifth pregnancy, she developed postnatal depression . Within three weeks in his clinic, Cameron diagnosed that she was suffering from acute schizophrenia. He treated her with 102 electric shocks, 6 joules of electricity per treatment, over four months , and placed her in an artificial coma for 86 days . This completely erased her memory, and she had to learn how to use the bathroom again. She had no more memories of her previous life, and when she returned she no longer recognized her own family.

literature

  • Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain: Acid Dreams. The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond. With an introduction by Andrei Codrescu , New York: 1992. ISBN 978-0-8021-3062-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary Notices . In: British Medical Journal . 3, No. 5568, September 23, 1967, pp. 803-804. PMC 1843238 (free full text).
  2. ^ Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams , pp. 23-25, 188.
personal data
SURNAME Cameron, Donald Ewen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish American psychiatrist who most recently worked in Canada
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Bridge of Allan , Perthshire , United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1967
Place of death Lake Placid , New York , United States